and all of us into the belief that a severe winter cold would kill him. Then the war came, and three winters in the trenches made a new man of him.
"Gordon, of course, went back to the Foreign Office, where he seems perfectly happy. He will never fit his grandfather's shoes, however. Robert had more wit in his little finger than Gordon has in his handsome head—but it is a very handsome head.
"Do you know that I am practicing great self-restraint? I have hardly mentioned your godson Eric—for fear, perhaps, of saying too much. He was away at school when you were last here, so he must be a very shadowy figure to you. He might have been like a son to you all these years, if only you had not cut yourself adrift from us all. For five years, you say, you have been almost within a day's journey of England without once crossing the Channel. And yet time was when London was like a ball at your feet. Your great fault, Stephen, is that you take defeat badly. I still believe that you could have turned your political reverse at least into victory if you had stayed.
"At forty-one Eric is very like what Robert was at that age, but more dynamic. Keep that